Increasingly, aircraft reports are used in incident analysis. Traditionally, incident analyses relied upon data from aircraft equipment, such as a Flight Data Recorder (FDR) and a Cockpit Voice Recorder (CVR). The FDR generally records avionics data from various onboard sensors and aircraft subsystems, and the CVR generally records the cockpit voices during the flight. In the event of an incident, data from the FDR and CVR is often analyzed in an incident analysis to ascertain the root cause of the incident. However, in order to use data from the FDR and CVR for incident analysis, the FDR and CVR have to first be found.
In some scenarios, it may be difficult and time consuming to locate the FDR and CVR. Even when aircraft incidents occur over ground, it can take several days to locate the FDR and CVR. Moreover, after the FDR and CVR are located, incident analysis may incur a lot of time and effort, because the FDR and CVR each typically contain a large amount of information. Therefore, aircraft reports are increasingly relied upon to make up for these deficiencies.
Some current onboard systems generate aircraft reports in reliance on an internal database which includes a variety of pre-defined instructions (herein, the instructions may also be referred to as logic) that are created to assist in incident analysis. The pre-defined instructions generally poll the status of one or more aircraft subsystems or sensors. The pre-defined instructions may be created using any currently available script language, and stored in an onboard database. In such a system, typically, when one of the pre-defined instructions is met during the flight, the onboard system generates a report including essential avionics data and sends the report to a ground control station, such as an Air Traffic Control (ATC) station.
However, the aforementioned systems are primarily reactionary. An anticipatory input may improve the system. Cockpit voice (defined herein as the voice in the cockpit, the communications among flight crew, the communications between air and ground, and the aural alarms from the avionics system), may provide the valuable anticipatory input. Adding cockpit voice (for example, by scanning voice data for safety keywords) to the considerations for sending reports may cover some additional urgent scenarios that current pre-defined instructions alone cannot cover. Although keywords such “stall,” “fire,” “pull up”, etc. are highly unlikely, a reporting system designed with an abundance of caution may look for these words in cockpit voice data in order to provide anticipatory input to the system. An onboard system capable of detecting a situation of concern earlier could trigger the sending of a report including essential aircraft parameters to the ground earlier, which may enable prevention, or timelier and more accurate incident analysis. However, it is essential to validate that any keywords captured from cockpit voice really mean something of concern is happening on the aircraft before triggering a report, or false alarms may occur.
Accordingly, an onboard reporting system capable of detecting keywords in voice data and considering the keywords in combination with respective predefined instructions is desirable. The desired system uses, for each keyword, predefined instructions to validate the keyword prior to sending a report to a ground station. The desired onboard system would improve the timeliness, accuracy and availability of the reports, as well as improving overall aircraft safety.